1998: MU’s Devin West rushes for 319 yards in a 41-23 win in Columbia.

2007: No. 4 MU beats No. 2 KU 36-28 in epic Arrowhead Armageddon.

Don Fambrough lived for the Border War and the anti-Missouri gospel of hatred he dutifully spewed the week before the annual rivalry game. With liberal use of four-letter words and artistic license — a trusting player once noted on his history exam that William Quantrill, the Missouri-based confederate guerilla behind the Lawrence Massacre in 1863, was an MU alum — the former KU coach indoctrinated each new crop of Jayhawks.

“He broke it down from” Missouri “being a slave state to Lawrence being burned down to women being abused and raped,” Kansas safety Bradley McDougald said, referring to Quantrill’s Raid. “He didn’t leave anything out. He held no punches. What did Missouri fight for? What is their side of it? How are they right in this?”

Fambrough, who died in September at 88, was so staunch in his dislike of Missouri that the college fund he started for his great-granddaughter was “null and void” if she chose to attend MU.

Recalling a time when doctors told him he needed surgery and suggested a specialist across enemy lines, Fambrough replied, “I’d rather die than have some Missouri bastard cut on me.”

But those close to the old coach say the fire-and-brimstone caricature was not entirely accurate.

David Lawrence, a former KU offensive lineman who took Fambrough’s place as the Missouri week speaker last year, will let you in on a hush-hush truth.

Fambrough didn’t hate Missouri.

“It’s about standing up for your side of it,” Lawrence said. “You’re hating the other end of what you stand for. I was really close to Fam, and I don’t think he really hated them. Of course, he lived that up and that was kind of his image, but he liked the people. He wasn’t all that.

“He just tried to bring out the emotion, which you need to do.” Players “need to understand that this is a different game.”

Lawrence suspects most sound-minded supporters on both sides of the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi River feel the same way. Then again, maybe not. As Lawrence recalled from his days as a sideline reporter for KU, a “very mature, educated-looking” woman on Faurot Field said of Quantrill, “I wish he would have just killed them all.”

As Missouri and Kansas prepare to meet for the final time in the foreseeable future today at Arrowhead Stadium, those involved reflected on the meaning of the rivalry.

What has made the Border War unique? Is there a genuine hatred between the two schools, which began playing only a generation removed from the Civil War in 1891? Or do players and coaches — most of whom arrived in Columbia and Lawrence unfamiliar with the rivalry’s historic origins — see it as a different game only because they are told it is a different game?

The answer lies in the middle.

Early in their careers, players — especially on the KU side — learn the traits that make the rivalry unique.

For McDougald, the history lesson was surprising. Growing up in Ohio, McDougald said he never considered the roots of the hostility in the more prominent Ohio State-Michigan rivalry.

“I really truly don’t even know the real reason,” he said.

It was different in Lawrence, where McDougald heard Fambrough tell him and his teammates in a sermon laced with “beep-beep-beeps,” why the Border War was more than a football game. Receiver Kale Pick recalled the speech as “shocking” while Lawrence, a 1983 KU graduate, said it “changed my life.”

“We just started playing 28 years after our town was burned down and most of our adult males were murdered in front of their families,” Lawrence said. “Not that those were Tigers alums, which was always one of Fam’s lines. I don’t use that one. I do try to keep the historical things and dates kind of in line.”

Even native Missourians like defensive tackle Richard Johnson, a senior from Jefferson City who joked he was labeled a traitor and worse when he defected, embrace the Kansas cause.

“One of the biggest reasons I came here was for the rivalry game,” he said.

Missourians, meanwhile, note Quantrill’s slaughter of nearly 200 men in Lawrence was retaliation for several attacks from Kansans, though MU players do not face the same bombardment of 19th century American history as their western neighbors. They know Kansas is their hated rival, and that is enough.

“Since I’m not from Missouri, I only hate KU because we’re supposed to hate KU,” said Michael Sam, a sophomore defensive end from Hitchcock, Texas.

Defensive coordinator Dave Steckel said he does not speak to his brother, Les, a Kansas alum, the week of the game. David Yost, Missouri’s offensive coordinator, takes the rivalry spirit a step further — even as he concedes his dislike for KU is nothing personal.

“We hate them, and they hate us,” Yost said. “When I see their coaches out recruiting, I don’t want to be nice to them. I’ve met a few of their coaches after they’re away from Kansas or coaching other places and I always tell them, ‘Man, I can like you now.’ ”

About the only common ground between the neighbors is the agreement the feud, no matter how genuine the hatred, inspires a game like no other on the schedule.

“Times that you will usually tempo it down, you don’t,” McDougald said. “You try to go find the extra block, you try to go make the extra play. Somehow, someway, you just try to get in the mix of things. You might be 50 yards backside, you’re still trash talking, you’re still blocking. You’re not going to let things go by easily.

“That’s the beauty of a rivalry. It brings the best out of players, and it brings the worst.”